


Just the Same

by Sohotthateveryonedied



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Brothers, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, REAL siblings prank and make fun of each other at every turn, Sick Character, Sick Jason Todd, Sickfic, Tim Drake Being a Little Shit, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, he's so tired tho, parenting, someone save this tired dad please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied
Summary: “You’re sick.”“You’re ugly.”“Why didn’t you tell anyone you weren’t feeling well?”“I’m fine.” Jason closes his eyes. “Just a little tired.”“Uh-huh. And that’s why you have a fever?”
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 37
Kudos: 584





	Just the Same

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce has fucking SNAPPED y'all. He's so unhinged at the beginning of the fic because when I wrote this I was riding on a Redbull high, so it got kinda weird. I'm like Alexander Hamilton but so much Worse.
> 
> Enjoy!

Bruce has a very simple plan for tonight, alright? He’s going to grab a quick post-patrol snack from the kitchen, then he’s going to take a shower, and then he will go  _ promptly _ to bed. He’s tired. It’s been a long day. He just wants to  _ sleep.  _   
  
_ (You absolute fool,  _ the goblin in his brain screeches at him, because the goddamn  _ Batman _ cannot get a goddamn _ break  _ or else the world will  _ literally  _ split in two.)   
  
Fatefully, Bruce passes the den’s open doorway while half of his mind is preoccupied with sending Dick a goodnight text, and he happens to glance into the room. That’s when he stops in his tracks. Even more fatefully, Alfred is coming down the hall in Bruce’s direction, carrying a tray with a single cup of tea on it.   
  
“Alfred?”   
  
“Yes, Master Bruce?”    
  
“Were you aware that Jason was home?”   
  
Alfred looks over at where Jason is asleep on the den sofa, still in his leather jacket and boots. He doesn’t look remotely surprised by the sight. Then again, is Alfred ever surprised? “Master Jason got in while you were on patrol. I offered to make him dinner, but he said he wasn’t hungry.” Then there’s that classic Alfred Pennyworth eyebrow crease. “When he wakes up, do inform him that one does not forgo the need for nutrition when one has been dipped in a Lazarus Pit.”   
  
“I’ll be sure to do that.”   
  
“Now, if you will excuse me.” Alfred walks off with his perfectly level tray, on a perilous journey to Damian’s room. Bruce envies him. At least Alfred gets to go to  _ sleep _ after Damian gets his nighttime tea.   
  
Bruce enters the den carefully, without a sound. God knows Jason hardly sleeps through the night without interruption as it is. Now, at least, he looks peaceful enough. So much time has passed since his last haircut that his hair curls against his temple, plastered with sweat. He must have come here straight from Red Hood business. At least he didn’t get blood on the couch this time.   
  
Quietly, Bruce pulls the knitted throw blanket from where it’s draped over the back of the sofa and lays it over Jason, tucking it in close when he catches a shiver rattling Jason’s teeth. Now that he’s paying attention, he can see that Jason’s cheeks are flushed as well. His mouth is locked in a grimace, even in sleep.    
  
Bruce presses the back of his hand against Jason’s forehead and clicks his tongue. Definitely a fever.   
  
Jason’s eyebrows wrinkle at the touch. His eyes crack open and take a moment to land on Bruce, sitting on the edge of the couch by Jason’s torso. It says a lot that he doesn’t go into battle mode as soon as he registers an unfamiliar presence in the room. “Mmph. Go away.”   
  
“You’re sick.”   
  
“You’re ugly.”   
  
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you weren’t feeling well?”   
  
“I’m fine.” Jason closes his eyes. “Just a little tired.”   
  
“Uh-huh. And that’s why you have a fever?”   
  
“Why don’t you mind your fucking—” Jason tumbles into a coughing fit, wet and hacking.   
  
“I’ll be right back,” Bruce tells him with a parting pat on the knee. His knees creak as he stands, heading for the bathroom down the hall. He digs through the medicine cabinet until he finds the thermometer, one of many that Alfred keeps in every bathroom in the house. He grabs a bottle of Tylenol as well.   
  
Bruce goes back to the couch and reclaims his spot next to Jason, who has stopped coughing by now, but his breathing is heavy. Bruce touches the thermometer to Jason’s temple, ignoring his weak swats. It reads out a hundred and one degrees. “When did you start feeling sick?”   
  
Jason grunts and rolls onto his side, curling in on himself. “Dunno. Yesterday, I guess.”   
  
Bruce frowns. Of  _ course _ Jason would ignore any achy feelings for as long as possible. None of Bruce’s kids have a single self-preserving bone in their bodies. “Tell me your symptoms.”   
  
“Being a fucking snack.”   
  
“Jason.”    
  
Jason coughs. “Leave me alone, old man.”   
  
“Does your throat hurt?”   
  
“Yeah, so quit trying to make me talk.”   
  
“Any nausea?”   
  
Jason buries his face into a throw pillow. “You’re fuckin’ exhausting, you know that?” He sighs. “Not since last night. I’m freezing, lethargic, and my head is killing me. Happy?”   
  
Bruce hums. “It’s probably the flu.”   
  
“Yeah, no shit.” Jason closes his eyes. “Now will you leave me  _ alone?  _ You’re making my headache worse.”   
  
Bruce twists open the Tylenol cap and shakes out a couple of tablets into his palm. “Here.” He holds them out to Jason.   
  
Jason opens one eye, looks at the pills, and closes it again. “No.”   
  
“Jason—”   
  
_ “No.  _ Don’t like pills.”   
  
Bruce can’t say he didn’t expect as much. Still, it does Jason no favors to continuously refuse any sort of medication, choosing to tough out the pain for as long as he can. It all ties back to his mother’s drug addiction, a disease which Jason watched slowly kill her over years and years. It makes sense that he’d grow up with an unwavering aversion to drugs.   
  
When Jason was a small tot, Bruce and Alfred spent what probably accumulated to hours of cajoling, trying to talk Jason into taking even the lightest painkillers. Lidocaine and numbing solutions were fine, but anything resembling a narcotic was out—and still is, apparently.   
  
It makes Bruce wonder how Jason reacted to the Lazarus Pit and its euphoria-inducing waters—part of the whole “magical healing” process. Maybe he was too out of his mind at the time to form a solid thought, much less remember his childhood trauma.   
  
This is one fight Bruce chooses not to get into, so he recaps the Tylenol and sets it aside. Miraculously, Jason is already asleep again. That’s fine with Bruce; it’s better his son sleeps this flu off than wastes his energy arguing.    
  
Trying not to jostle him too much, Bruce takes off Jason’s boots and leaves them on the carpet. He grabs the TV remote and settles in on the couch with Jason’s feet in his lap, pulling up a nature documentary on hyenas that he and Damian haven’t had the chance to finish yet. Looks like he’ll be catching up on his sleep tomorrow night. Right now, Jason needs him (despite how fervently he’ll protest as much).   
  
Honestly, this whole situation brings Bruce back to the old days.    
  
After moving into the manor, it took over six months for Jason to completely recover from the years of malnutrition he suffered on the streets. His weight was far too low for a boy his age, even more scrawny than Tim. Alfred provided Jason with plenty of vitamin supplements and extra servings at dinner to bulk him up, but his immune system was shoddy at best no matter how much weight he gained.   
  
During his Robin era it was illness after illness, from the common cold to a whammying case of pneumonia. This is the first time Jason has been sick in Bruce’s presence since his death, though.   
  
Bruce is learning about the eating habits of hyenas when Tim comes in from the kitchen with a cup of peppermint tea, despite having supposedly gone to bed three hours ago. He stands there in the doorway for a moment, looks owlishly at Jason, then at Bruce, then back to Jason. He grins.   
  
“No,” Bruce says.   
  
“You don’t even know what I was going to do!”   
  
“I know you, and the answer is no.”   
  
“Jeez, Bruce. I’m not gonna  _ kill  _ him.” Tim attempts to cross his arms, forgetting that he’s holding hot tea, and hisses when it scalds his arm. “The hand-in-warm-water trick’s never hurt anyone,” he mutters.   
  
“Go back upstairs. You’ll get sick.”   
  
Tim wrinkles his nose. “This is prejudice against people without spleens, you know. I could sue your ass.”   
  
“Sue me from upstairs where I can comfortably know that you won’t die from the flu.”   
  
Tim rolls his eyes, but he goes. Bruce hears him stomp up the stairs, getting quieter and quieter until the footsteps are gone entirely. Bruce shakes his head. How did he ever think that having four boys would be a good idea? He questions his younger self’s judgement every day.   
  
For the next three hours, Jason sleeps in fits and starts. He never stays awake longer than five minutes at a time, drinking water when Bruce prods him to and grudgingly letting Bruce check his temperature for any spikes. Bruce learns quite a bit about hyenas in the meantime, until the documentary ends and a new one about sea otters begins.   
  
In between the hazy bouts of wakefulness, Jason tosses restlessly in the throes of nightmare after nightmare. Beads of sweat roll down his forehead. In the back of his mind Bruce wonders, is this just the fever talking or are nightmares a nightly villain for Jason? The latter would come as no shock, but that doesn’t mean he likes the idea.   
  
Bruce runs his fingers through Jason’s sweaty curls, a reflection of years ago when he would do the same thing any time Jason had a nightmare during his youth. Jason has been cheated out of peaceful nights from the beginning. Of course, back then there wasn’t a white streak splitting the darkness of his onyx hair—a reminder of the pit water swimming in Jason’s blood.   
  
Bruce moves a lock of hair off Jason’s forehead, gentle as a moth. Jason’s eyes fly open and he jerks away from the touch, a gasp ripping up his throat. Bruce doesn’t move. He gives Jason a moment to regain his bearings, stilling the hand in Jason’s hair.    
  
Green irises lock on Bruce, frenzied. “Where?” he croaks.   
  
“The manor.”   
  
Jason takes a deep breath in, clenching his jaw. “Okay.” He lets it out. “Okay.”   
  
Bruce grabs the water bottle he’s kept on the coffee table. “Here,” he says, moving his hand down to Jason’s back and prodding a shoulder blade. “Sit up.”   
  
“Fuck you.” It comes out half groan, the illness-wrought exhaustion catching back up with Jason.   
  
“You need to hydrate.”   
  
“Double fuck you.”   
  
Bruce shrugs. “Drink half of this or I’ll call Alfred and have him convince you. Your choice.”   
  
Jason rolls his eyes and snatches the bottle. Bruce will take that as a victory. Jason sits up with enormous effort, groaning at the aches in his body until he’s upright next to Bruce. He drinks the water, wincing when it hits his sore throat.   
  
“What were you dreaming about?” Bruce ventures to ask.   
  
Jason lowers the bottle to narrow his eyes at Bruce like he’s the biggest idiot in this room. “Shut up.”   
  
The annoying part is that Bruce genuinely has no idea what Jason’s nightmare could have been about. His childhood? His death? His  _ resurrection?  _ Any of the traumatic things that could have happened afterward, ones that Bruce wasn’t there for?   
  
There is such a disconnect between the two of them now. He should count it a blessing that they have moments like this, though Bruce would greatly prefer spending time with Jason while he  _ isn’t  _ sick and miserable. But Bruce will take it, nonetheless.   
  
Jason drains a sufficient amount of water, only to lurch forward in another coughing fit as soon as he gets in a breath.  _ “Christ,”  _ he rasps, eyes watering. “Just fucking shoot me already, will ya?”   
  
Bruce rubs his back. “I could tranq you, if you really think it would help. But I can’t guarantee that one of your brothers won’t take advantage of that and draw mustaches on your face while I’m not looking.”   
  
“Har, har. You’re a fucking comedian now.” Jason’s voice is coarse as gravel, scraping up his vocal cords.    
  
“Want some tea? It’ll help soothe your throat.”   
  
“Later. Just wanna...sleep for now.” In spite of everything he stands for, Jason tips his head to rest it on Bruce’s shoulder. Whether it was intentional or he’s just so disoriented from the fever that he has no idea he’s even doing it, Bruce won’t take the gesture for granted.    
  
Jason is shivering, so Bruce pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders where it slackened during his sleep. Then, in a riskier maneuver, he puts his arm around Jason and pulls him in close like he did so many times when Jason was a lot shorter and a lot less jagged around the edges. Bcuce still loves him just the same.   
  
Jason leans into Bruce’s warmth instinctively, but he warns, “Tell anyone about this and I’ll shatter your clavicle.”   
  
“Mm-hm.”   
  
“I mean it. You’ll need a goddamn orthopedic surgeon to fix you up if you breathe a word of this to anyone.”   
  
“I believe you.”   
  
It must be a good enough answer because Jason closes his eyes, relaxing in Bruce’s hold. “The only reason I’m gonna say this is ‘cause my brain is melting,” Jason says, “but...thanks. For being here.” He yawns. “Being sick alone fuckin’ sucks.”   
  
“I hear you.”   
  
“And keep Tim away from me, ‘kay? I don’t trust the little snot not to pull something.”   
  
Bruce snorts and unpauses the otter movie. “Go to sleep, Jay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rumor has it that if you comment and tell me what your favorite kind of sandwich is, Jesus Himself will crash in through your bedroom window on a rainbow skateboard and give you a high five.
> 
> [Feel free to mosey on down to my Tumblr!](http://sohotthateveryonedied.tumblr.com/)


End file.
